


Love That Red

by lillianmmalter



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Beauty Maintenance, Canon Disabled Character, Domestic Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 01:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11243799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: Peggy tries to do her nails. It doesn’t go to plan.





	Love That Red

Peggy carefully removed her nail polish one finger at a time. Her nails faded slowly, from scarlet to pink to the natural pale peach of her own skin. When she was done, she crossed her right foot high on her left knee and reached to remove the chipped polish from her toes as well.

For the first time in her life, she couldn’t properly reach.

Peggy scowled and shifted, sprawling inelegantly, trying to prop her heel against her vanity, contorting herself to pull her foot up to her side on the chair instead, bending forward just that bit more all to _not_ reach her toenails. Her foot slipped across the upholstery of the chair and landed on the floor with a dull thud. Her stomach gave a rude twinge at the impact just to add further insult.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t remove the nail polish from her own damn toes, never mind repainting them.

Her frustration turned to anger, and then to a hard lump in her throat, and suddenly her eyes were watering with unwanted tears and she hated this, hated herself for feeling this way. What was wrong with her? She was not the kind of woman to cry over something so small, she wasn’t. Her hormones could go to hell.

“Need a little help?” Daniel asked from the bedroom door.

Peggy dashed her hands at her face.

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” she replied, her voice only wobbling a little.

“Peg, I love you, but you’re as big as a house and you can’t reach your feet. It’s okay to ask for a little help. I know you hate to have chipped polish for any longer than you have to.”

Peggy shifted, avoiding his eyes. She wanted to be angry at him, but it would only make her feel more ridiculous. He was telling the truth, after all. She was as big as a house. As big as a bloody mansion. Still, she had some pride left.

“I’ll simply go to the salon tomorrow. It’s fine.”

Daniel sighed, but said nothing. Instead, he walked into the room and dragged another chair toward where she was sitting, placing it in front of her and pulling her left foot into his lap once he was seated, his crutch laid beside him on the floor.

“Daniel-”

“Let me do this for you, Peg,” he said, eyes big and sincere. “I’m not a bad hand with these little paintbrushes.”

“All those model airplanes,” she said, thinking of the room they set aside for him in their new house solely so he could indulge in his somewhat childish hobby.

“Right.”

She still wanted to say no. Her nails were a feminine thing, one of the few feminine things she allowed herself on the battlefield and in the office surrounded by men. It was a badge of pride to look down at her hands and see that flash of red at the tips of her fingers, to feel the slick weight of the paint on her nails as she went about her daily tasks. It was a selfish pleasure to glance down at her bare feet and see the red glinting back up at her.

And yet…

And yet Daniel had never once disparaged her femininity. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it. She couldn’t count the number of times since their wedding she’d looked up from applying lipstick or slipping on some silky undergarment to catch him watching her in the mirror, his face awed and proud and loving. It was a similar face, in fact, to the one she sometimes caught him wearing after she violently took down a group of thugs.

It was her pride that was stopping her accepting his help, that was all. Pride and habit and a lingering attachment to something trivial in a life otherwise largely barren of trivialities.

Besides, she’d watched him with his little airplanes. He had a deft hand with a brush.

She nodded and he smiled at her.

Peggy relaxed back into her chair and watched him go to work on her toes, first removing the polish with more care than she would have taken, then methodically rubbing a little of her Nivea Creme into her skin, working at the arches of each foot until she moaned. He was flawless in his work as he reapplied the nail polish. Each stroke of the tiny brush was precise and controlled, never slipping to paint her skin, never missing a sliver of nail.

Peggy watched him, quiet and calm with one hand absently rubbing circles over her swollen belly.

He was beautiful like this. Steady concentration and not a hint of worry left in the lines of his body. He looked just as he did when she spied on him with his model airplanes.

In the end, Daniel did a better job painting her toes than Peggy had managed on her own for months.

He placed a whisper of a kiss on the top of her foot before carefully easing it down to rest flat against the floor.

“You want me to do your hands too?” he asked when both feet were done.

“I can still manage my hands.”

He huffed in amusement.

“Let me rephrase that: Will you let me do your hands too?”

Peggy regarded him. It was rather nice to be pampered this way.

“Hand me that pillow,” she said.

He blinked and looked behind him, then twisted to grab one of the small, decorative pillows that graced their bed when it was made. He handed it to her and she placed it on her lap with exaggerated care, laying her hands on it in the precise manner she’d witnessed the neighborhood wives do when treating themselves to a manicure at the salon.

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow, making him grin.

Daniel kissed her gently on the fingers of her left hand, just below her wedding ring, then got to work.

Peggy decided she could get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a 1951 Revlon nail polish of the same name. It seemed to match relatively well to the modern OPI polish, Cinnamon Sweet, that was used on Hayley while filming Agent Carter.


End file.
